שאלות ותשובות
(She’elot u-teshuvot, Questions and Answers)
Moses ben Isaac Alashkar, author
Cornelio Adelkind for Tobia ben Eliezer Foà, printer
1553 CE, Sabbioneta, Duchy of Mantua (present-day Italy)
Paper leaves bound in marbled paper over board with cloth spine
This printed Hebrew book, a responsa (or responses to legal questions), contains Rabbi Moses ben Isaac Alashkar’s answers to questions that scholars and other rabbis had about how to interpret ancient Jewish law. It was published by the well-to-do Jewish printing house established by Tobia Foà in Sabbioneta, near Parma, under the direction of Cornelio Adelkind, a famously competent printer of Hebrew books in sixteenth-century Italy. When this book was printed in 1553 CE, over one thousand years had passed since the primary source of Jewish law, the Talmud, was completed. Just as the Supreme Court in the United States must apply the Constitution in light of societal and technological changes, so too did Jewish scholars interpret the Talmud.
Rachel Vorsanger